El Goonish Shive

So...how exactly would magic's "flair for the dramatic" work if ALL strong magical talents are inherited? You'd think that would kill the effect and get pretty dull.

I mean, it used to not be common knowledge, right?

And now more people are knowing it, which means magic might in fact change.

Of course, that seems a bit weird if actual gods know about it, so it probably can't change too much.

—shrug—

I'm pretty sure Ellen and Elliot don't have immortal lineage, since they were never established as having genetic affinities and all their magic comes from personality or shit that happened to them. And Grace doesn't seem able to use human magic, so she's in another category altogether.

Susan, Tedd, Nanase and Sarah are all Immortal descendants. Tedd's a seer, Sarah has a genetic affinity, and we can infer from Noriko's comments that Tedd's genetic inheritance comes from her line (IIRC she was implied, though perhaps not explicitly stated to be a wizard), so it applies to Nanase too.

Justin is the only one left ambiguous since we don't know what his magic mark came from- it could well just be an extension of his martial-arts practice, or their may be something in his DNA too.

There's an interesting game of "guess which characters are descended from which immortals". (I'm assuming that we're being given a fair chance in this guessing game, and that Nanase isn't descended from an Immortal we've never heard of.)

Comic 2447

What happens when we break the law?
What happens when the rules aren't fair?
We all know here we go from there
To the house of pain!

Well, props to anyone who called that Pandora was going to genocide the abberations. Cause that just happened.

So, I'm assuming the penultimate panel means Sirleck survived.

Especially when The Rant leads to a comic where he just mentioned having "dodged a bullet".

Ah. I missed that bit of timing.

Do I get half props?

Wait, does that mean the car ride is happening after all this?

Yes, that was said several times. This whole sequence at the mall was essentially a flashback from the car ride's perspective.

J Esus Pandora.

This reminds me of Familicide. Or the old D&D trick to turn "Locate City" into "Kill Everybody".

One day the main characters will do something. One day.

What are you talking about? She ''did'' just do something!

So, where are Helena and Demetrius then? They must have been several miles away from Elliot in order for Sirleck to survive.

I think what happened is that the immortals were forced into the material plane. Sirleck is intangible, so the spell didn't affect him. If there were an immortal near enough that was also on the immaterial plane he would have gotten hit.

Nah, I think it's purely a geographic thing.

Sirleck and Magus caught both Ellen and Elliot outside immortal surveillance, and I don't remember if we were even shown why the two immortals shadowing him were away at the time (and still are).

I think it was suggested a few times that Helena and Demetrius don't solely hang around Elliot and/or Ellen for various reasons. They do other stuff, too. I guess the implication here is that they were busy with one of those "various reasons."

What'll be interesting is if Pandora's next incarnation is going to have extra limitations because she somehow figured out how to break immortal "law" twice. If I were to guess, Pandora will be zapped down to a child (which would conveniently let her be adopted, such as it is, by Raven). Heck, there's the non-zero chance that she actually predicted that a double violation would result in that, setting herself up to be adopted by Raven to ensure that she's still connected to her family.

Also, not that it matters much, but I got the impression that Raven did not emigrate from England at all. To be honest, I had the sense he came from Russia or thereabouts. But to some extent, it's moot, because language tends to evolve even in the eldest based on what's around them (some are more prone to this than others - some people will start assimilating words - and accents, for that matter - within minutes of speaking with someone with a different dialect). Raven constantly is surrounded by hundreds of modern youths, and the word they most commonly use to describe their maternal figures is most likely "Mom." Regardless of what he called Pandora growing up, it's perfectly reasonable for him to have shifted to using that word simply because that's what gets used in his presence most frequently.

Goddamn, how strong is she? That's ridiculous.

I'm not really sure what narrative purpose this serves. It's not like Pandora's been an Abomination-hunting Knight Templar dedicated to purging Abominations at all costs or something that would make this feel like an appropriate finale for her character arc.

This Abomination-slaying Familicide kinda comes out of left field. Like, I feel like this should feel like an epic moment with Pandora finally achieving her greatest objective in her final moments or something, but instead it's just kind of a non-sequitur.

It's like if Tedd was dying and, in his last moments, released a secret project he'd been working on all this time: a cure for global warming. Like, that's cool and all, but I'm not really sure how that at all relates to anything you've ever been about and it kinda hinders my ability to be excited for it.

edited 16th Jan '18 12:52:36 PM by TobiasDrake

Yeah, I was more expecting her to release the dam or something.

@26697 ... huh, a very good point. I hadn't thought of it at first, but I totally see what you mean on a Watsonian basis.

I mean, on a Doylist perspective, I think Shive wanted to clear abominations off the board for a number of reasons (avoiding further Cerebus Syndrome, them having served their narrative purpose by and large, wanting to definitively shift the focus of the series). And Pandora was the one being that clearly had the capability for doing so.

I can kinda see one Watsonian argument for it (namely, Pandora already has a history of Disproportionate Retribution, being that she was behind the extinction event for werewolves because of what one had done to Blaike), but it does feel a bit forced.

Also the main characters played no part in this! The only thing that mattered was that it was her family, such as with Tedd being her godchild, but that doesn't mean they really DID anything. They served the narrative equivalence of a kidnapped child in a taken movie.